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Police on Saturday accused a man of placing three rice cookers – two in a subway station and one in a Chelsea neighborhood – at the origin of a bomb threat that disrupted the morning commute Friday, officials said.
The man, identified by police as Larry K. Griffin II, 26, was arrested in the Bronx early Saturday.
He was charged with three counts of placing a fake bomb, one for each of the rice cookers, the police said. A motive for the placement of the rice cookers has remained unknown.
The episode began Friday around 7 am, after the authorities were alerted by two suspicious aircraft at the Fulton Street subway station. An hour later, police were alerted by a third suspicious device near a garbage can in the Chelsea neighborhood.
Around 10 am, the authorities announced that the three devices were empty rice cookers and were not dangerous. All three were the same rice cooker, officials said.
Griffin, a former resident of Bruno, West Virginia, was seen on a video leaving two cameras on the subway platform of Fulton Street Station and his photo was widely circulated.
John Miller, deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism of the New York Police Department, said the officials did not know why Mr. Griffin had placed the rice cookers on the subway. He said that they could have been garbage "and this guy picked them up and threw them away."
A local sheriff's office in West Virginia said in a press release according to which law enforcement officials had contacted Mr. Griffin. According to the release, Mr. Griffin was reportedly arrested at least three times in the past eight years.
The charges against Mr. Griffin in West Virginia included the possession of a controlled substance containing weapons and the use of obscene material to seduce a minor. He was also under an active arrest warrant for non-reporting and missing drug testing devices as part of his bail monitoring before the trial, the statement said.
Around 5 pm On Friday, Mr. Griffin called his brother Jason Griffin, Connecticut, to tell him that he was scared and that he did not know what to do while the police were looking for him.
Griffin, who left West Virginia to settle in New York in May, has a history of mental illness and lives on the street, said Jason Griffin.
"He thinks being homeless is fun," Griffin said Friday. "He was picking up things and he said he found three rice cookers in front of a sushi restaurant."
Tara Brumfield, Mr. Griffin's cousin, told the TV channel WSAZ News Channel 3 that Mr. Griffin used to pick up objects.
"It's all about tools, from a fishing rod or something like that, he'll pick up one thing and leave it there, then take another one and let it there, and I've seen her doing things like that a few times, "she says.
The Friday episode, which disrupted the morning commute, recalled other bombings.
In December 2017, a man blew up a homemade bomb in a subway crossing near the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan. The device did not explode completely and the assailant is the only person injured.
In 2016, at least 29 people were injured during the explosion of a pressure cooker containing shrapnel in Chelsea. Blocks further, a second device was found and disarmed.
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